Walking through glades a lighter shade of Green

MARY WHITE:Trails involving nature not election campaigns now occupy the first woman Green TD

ON THE morning of the general election, Mary White was thinking about what she would do next. “I’m one of those people who sweep out the desk, clear the files and move on,” she says.

“I made up my mind that if I didn’t get in, I would go back to what I did before in a voluntary capacity.”

She is now using experience of leading walks in Carlow’s mountains, setting up a company, blackstairsecotrails.ie, offering eco walks accessible to “everyone from five to 105 years old”. These include a “fantastic fungi” weekend in September, picking and cooking various fungi, with advice from an Italian expert on the subject.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, she looked after her 91-year-old mother, Maureen, who died at the beginning of August. The former Green Party deputy leader was grateful to have had that time with her.

She has now dusted off a novel she wrote before becoming a TD, a “big family saga with lots of politics in it” and is rewriting it. She is also updating a walking guide on the Blackstairs mountains she wrote with Joss Lynam. Other activities include motivational speaking, working in “empowerment training for women”.

It is all a huge change from her four years as a Green Party TD including one as a minister of State with special responsibility for integration, equality and human rights. “I wouldn’t have swopped the experience for one single second. It was a fantastic opportunity,” she says. She had the added boon of being the first female Green TD, the first Green TD in Carlow-Kilkenny and the “totally unexpected” chance to be a minister of State.

It was a “privilege to be elected”. Waking up every morning, she believed “this is a day to be lived to its max because the whole pack of cards could collapse at any time”.

She misses the intellectual sparring, Dáil debates and “trying to change people’s views. What I really loved was the ability in government where we could bring about changes rather than pontificating in opposition.”

She doesn’t miss “the criticism and abuse”. During the election campaign, she was spat at by a “well-dressed, middle-aged man” in Carlow town. “I don’t think that’s acceptable behaviour towards anyone,” she says, believing it was “cowardly”. He did that “rather than speaking to me and saying ‘I think you’re a disgrace’.”

But the Greens’ term in government was “a very difficult time. People took their anger out on us.” That anger was there from early on. “Within a few weeks of going into government, we were getting it on the door that ‘you are propping up Fianna Fáil’, so even if we had walked away after six months”, the party would still have been criticised and electorally punished, she says.

The Greens “were not the architects of the economic downturn” or of the Celtic Tiger. “In fact, we were the ones called the spoilsports”, she says, because of their talk of unsustainable growth and proper planning regulation.

But she believes “any self-respecting political party has to get into government if it has the opportunity”. Their timing was unfortunate. “We had a change of taoiseach, economic disaster, unemployment, people looking at their reduced pay cheques – and it’s not nice seeing chunks of pay disappearing.”

Looking back, she acknowledges things may have been different if they had moved quicker on issues such as corporate donations and reform of local government.

“We were in government for the first time, finding our feet – and then the whole economic world collapsed. The pressure was on to save the country rather than put through a programme for government.”

She bristles at suggestions that the Greens did not help their reputation by focusing on issues such as the stag hunting legislation. “I don’t accept that for one nanosecond,” she insists. The stag hunting Bill which banned the hunting of deer with hounds, was “a three-page Bill” and was “well-hijacked by Rise!” (the pro-stag hunting lobby group) which claimed the Greens were out to “stop hunting, shooting and fishing. I fish, I shoot. There wasn’t even a hint about fox hunting or coursing,” she states. Rise!, however, “sang that song and people were happy to listen”.

There were some successes and the party’s great achievement was getting “our planning Bill in and there was a lot of opposition to that. I am very proud of that.”

However, she is very disappointed that Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan has reversed several parts of that legislation. He also abandoned independent investigations into the planning activities of a number of local authorities including Carlow County Council.

“We’ve had two very damning local government audits and people are very unhappy.

“It’s all very dispiriting.”

She will not be running again for election but remains very involved with the party and will actively support local representatives running for election.

The Greens will have to work hard to “get the trust back”, she acknowledges. People were “really annoyed with us. We take the punishment on the chin and we will work to get the respect back”.

Mary White, Green Party

Constituency: Carlow-Kilkenny

First elected:2007

Dáil service:Four years Current status:Self-employed